


Live And Let Die

by Gryphonrhi



Series: Hidden Facets [2]
Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-21
Updated: 2010-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 17:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rebecca, some students, and a dilemma.  Somewhat dark, I'm afraid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live And Let Die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raine_Wynd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_Wynd/gifts).



>   
> **Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and no expectation of profit. Written for Raine, for the Hidden Facets series. Beta courtesy of Alyss, Devo, Dragon, and Mischief; mistakes of course are mine, not theirs.  
> **Rated: R**, for violence of several kinds.

Everyone has something they can't learn the first time through. Sometimes it's a craft. Sometimes it's a language or a type of math that makes no sense. Sometimes, more worrying, it's that inner compass that some call morals, others ethics, or still others call honor.

Sometimes, the skill is unnecessary. Sometimes, the failure in itself is a salutary lesson. If they live long enough, however -- and immortals should -- there's time to try again.

If they live. And if they try.

* * *

1916

"Down!"

The word arrived almost simultaneously with the tackle that pushed Rebecca into a ditch. The road exploded around them into a flash of light, red and orange and white, and the world-shattering thunder of a bomb detonating. Dirt and rock rained down onto them, and the bitter smell of gunpowder surrounded them, along with the peculiar tangs of overheated stone and mud force-dried and near-vaporized by the heat.

Rebecca rolled over, presenting her back to the shrapnel still pattering down and letting the sheepskin coat take the worst of the damage. It also gave her a slightly better chance of not inhaling grit. She counted to ten, letting the last bits of thrown rock and metal fall back to earth before she started climbing out of the ditch.

A tall, solidly built girl clambered out behind her. "Too close. You all right? I've got to report in, they'll be needing me."

"I'll be fine, thank you," Rebecca said. She glanced around, reorienting to her destination; if the bombing was already hitting the edges of town, they'd need ambulance drivers worse than ever. "...there it is. Rebecca Greene. And you are...?" Rebecca asked.

"Annalys Bisset. From Ottawa." She looked over Rebecca's practical clothes -- the sturdy jacket and sturdier shoes, the canvas trousers Rebecca had brought because they shed blood well, the braided back hair and driving goggles around her neck -- and came to the correct conclusion after a moment. "I think I'm the other new ambulance driver."

Rebecca shook her extended hand, smiling at the incongruous introduction, and only then realized Annalys' had a muted quickening humming under her skin. _Well_, Rebecca thought, _if she can cope as an ambulance driver, hopefully she can cope with the Game._

Another bomb landed a few streets over, rocking the ground under their feet, and they abandoned niceties to sprint for the farmhouse-turned-ambulance dispatch center. They could talk tomorrow, or maybe even after the war, gods willing. Tonight they had other work to do.

* * *

1935

Rebecca watched from the doorway, disquieted as much by what she saw as what she didn't. The room was rich, too rich for this country in this year. The golden velvets and crimson leathers didn't murmur of intimacy, they spoke bluntly of sating appetites and baiting lusts into returning. The candles were beeswax, not tallow, the chaise lounge was long and wide enough for more than just rest, and the music from the discreetly placed gramophone spoke of hungers and resentments that would never be satisfied.

"Well? Are you going to stand there and disapprove or are you going to come in?" Annalys didn't stop applying her make-up, but she met Rebecca's gaze in her mirror momentarily. Then she returned her attention to painting blush along her cheekbones and shading darker powder under the blush.

"I never said I disapprove," Rebecca said mildly, still considering the room and her former student.

"But you do." Annalys painted her lips crimson, rich enough to match the cat-black hair.

Rebecca sighed and came all the way in, closing the door behind her. "Yes, now that you mention it. I do."

Annalys studied her lipstick and nodded before she carefully attached sapphire and pearl earrings to her lobes. She dabbed on a perfume that didn't suit her and which Rebecca was far too sure had been a gift from an admirer, applying it behind her ears, at the base of her throat, between her breasts. "You wouldn't say a word to Amanda."

"Would and have." Rebecca moved further into the room, turning the music down, before she cleared abandoned corsets from a stool and perched on it. "And this is nothing to do with your competition with Amanda--"

"I am not in competition with Amanda," Annalys snapped, hazel eyes suddenly bright without any further recourse to cosmetics.

"You are," Rebecca corrected her. "She's known me longer, Annalys, but that is between she and I, not between the two of us."

Something flashed in her eyes -- hurt? Anger? Irony dark enough to gall? Rebecca didn't know what it was, but she knew it for a sign that this overture would never be accepted. "You don't know what it is, Rebecca, which means you don't know who it may lie between." She turned away from Rebecca again to adjust her hair.

Her dress was lovely, Rebecca had to admit, and it did technically cover more than the flapper gowns which had been popular ten year ago. Other than that, it matched the rest of her room. "Annalys...."

"Anna," she replied flatly. "And no, Rebecca. We aren't discussing any of it."

She was watching Rebecca from a panel of the tri-fold mirror. Rebecca's glance barely caught the mingled defiance, longing, and regret; not knowing what brought on any of them left her with nothing she could do to help. So Rebecca stepped forward and adjusted the broach on her former student's dress, her hands careful and her warnings and worries held unspoken lest they add to the shell Annalys was building around herself.

Rebecca smoothed the shoulder strap into place and deliberately met Annalys' gaze, pale red hair behind jet black, pale fair skin behind a face that had to powder over freckles. Annalys' eyes were hiding everything she felt; Rebecca's gave away her worry. "Expensive fabrics aren't always the best armor, Anna. Go well and take care."

She withdrew into the hallway, shut the door again, and inhaled air less cloying than that of the small dressing room. Frightening, that, in the back halls of a Munich nightclub....

Even through the closed door, Rebecca heard the crash against the wall as she left. She could only hope Annalys wouldn't need to explain to an 'admirer' what had happened to that vase of flowers.

* * *

1954

Amanda showed up on Rebecca's doorstep out of nowhere, as she so often did, bearing very welcome gifts of butter and ham, jars of preserved patés and jams labeled in Darius' distinctive hand. "He's living down near Parma," Amanda said breezily, "and insisted I bring these to you. From the state of the shops, I think he was right."

Rebecca broke out a bottle of wine she'd been saving and made them a feast of apricot-glazed ham and Yorkshire pudding, fresh asparagus only just old enough to be sprouting and bread she'd baked that morning. More importantly, she let Amanda guide the conversation where she would and bided her time on the places Amanda wouldn't.

The real news came, as it so often did with Amanda, late in the night. Rebecca woke in her bed, hearing Amanda's quiet murmur of her name, and lifted the covers.

"I did warn you that room's fireplace has never drawn properly," she said ruefully.

Amanda slid in and promptly stole the warmth, cuddling in against Rebecca. "Oh, it doesn't, but I'll go back in a while. No sense scandalizing the maid, I hear they're very difficult to get these days."

"That's understating it," Rebecca agreed quietly. "But it would still be too noticeable if I didn't try to get help. Who is it and what's wrong? Fitz? Duncan? That new hellion of yours, Cory?"

Amanda sighed. "No, they're all fine, the last I heard. Well enough, anyway, and recovered from the war. More than here, certainly." She fidgeted with the sheet under her chin for a moment. "I can't...." Amanda paused, then tried again in a tone so careful that Rebecca tensed just hearing it. "I can't prove anything, Rebecca. I can't even be certain."

"But you're here to talk about it anyway?" Rebecca asked quietly, curling closer to hear better and because Amanda would find it easier to speak if Rebecca couldn't possibly see her face, no matter how many years practice Rebecca had at reading Amanda's body language.

"Yes." Amanda finally said simply, "It's Annalys, Rebecca. I think she tried to have me killed."

Rebecca's eyes closed, her heart contracting in pain that was still a shock no matter that she'd half-expected it. "My poor girl."

After a moment, Amanda said, "You must mean her. You never call me a girl."

"No, not in centuries," Rebecca said, grateful for Amanda's comforting touch on Rebecca's arm around her waist. "You didn't challenge her, I take it?"

"I wasn't sure enough," Amanda said softly. "And she is your student."

"I was more worried about the fact that she's got a backstroke like a woodchopper," Rebecca admitted. "I'm sorry, Amanda."

"But you're not surprised." Amanda still wasn't angry, and Rebecca relaxed a little more. "She's warping herself, isn't she?"

"I suspected she was, from the letters she sent and then the ones she didn't. She's been... odd since the Great War. I knew she was suffering from shell-shock, and first death on top of that. And then she was in Vienna during the second war." Rebecca finally sighed and said tiredly, "I can recommend. I can listen. I can talk, although not to enough purpose if it's a monologue. But I cannot make a horse drink and I cannot make a soul heal."

"That's her job, Rebecca. You gave her time and space and a shoulder to lean on. The rest of it was up to her." Amanda shrugged a little. "She's never liked me and I've never known why. It's not the usual jealousy, and I didn't even do anything to her."

Rebecca just nodded. "I know, Amanda." Very quietly she asked, "Are you all right?"

"I felt someone near and dodged. Fast enough, as it turns out." Amanda hadn't tensed. She finally went on, "I don't get along with everyone you've trained, Rebecca, but you do usually find decent ones. I've argued with enough of us about enough things, but the only student of yours I ever thought might be a danger to any of the rest of us was Luthor. Annalys trying to assassinate me is just wrong, like rocks falling up."

"They did that enough during the wars," Rebecca agreed quietly. "Thank you for bringing the news."

Amanda knew her too well; she turned and wrapped her arms around Rebecca. "Oh, no. You don't have to--"

"Yes, Amanda. I do." Rebecca's face was probably as bleak as her voice, but the darkness played into her favor now, too. "The attempt on you may have been a catharsis. If it wasn't, she'll grow bolder. We both know some of my other students are slower than you are."

"Yes, but they're usually stronger than I am, then. Do you have to go? What, you're going to play catalyst to see which way she's going?"

"Yes." Rebecca let Amanda rub at the knots tightening in the nape of her neck and finally added, "I taught her how to hide and move on, and I'm the one who taught her how to kill. In the end, Annalys is my responsibility, Amanda."

"Even if she's mad. Or if this has to be the end." Amanda huffed an exasperated breath. "So much for talking you out of this." Her voice shifted to the pragmatism Rebecca had always loved in her as Amanda said, "Well, turn over. I can do something about your back at least."

* * *

Finding Annalys could have taken months, Rebecca knew; she'd half-expected it would. But she retraced Amanda's steps to Amsterdam anyway and she deliberately checked into the hotel Amanda had used, giving her name as Rebecca Darrieux.

Someone's presence ghosted in and out of Rebecca's sensing range all during lunch.

Rebecca deliberately didn't look around, instead pretending to give all of her attention to the novel she was reading. She spent the afternoon relearning the area, paying particular attention to a few locations Amanda had suggested. If there had to be a challenge, Rebecca had no intention of being arrested.

She attended evening service at Noorderkerk, half-hoping Annalys would take the opportunity to talk to her.

Instead Rebecca looked up from her morning coffee two days later to see her one-time student striding towards the table. Rebecca studied her as she came and made no attempt to signal the waiter over with another coffee. He brought one anyway.

Annalys was moving easily, still in good shape physically, and too clearly paying attention only to her target. She bumped a chair as she came and ignored it as she ignored the attention her single-mindedness was attracting from the other restaurant patrons. She smiled at Rebecca as she took a seat, eyes bright with pleasure and malice. "You got my message then."

Rebecca sat erect and still while her heart pounded battle warnings through her veins. "I received a message. I'm not sure of the translation, however."

"Aren't you?" Annalys cocked her head and studied Rebecca; her smile tilted upward a little more, and she licked a drop of coffee off crimson lips. "What did you think I was saying?"

"It was your message, Annalys. You tell me." Rebecca studied her former student, gauging the make-up, the impeccable cut of her dress, the jewelry worn for display.... Rebecca could feel her own face stilling into an expressionless mask. If she hadn't been able to feel it, she could have mapped it in the rage surfacing across from her.

"You're shutting me out again." Annalys's eyes and cheeks were bright with fury, her voice laced with passion that would go one way or the other. Her hand shot out, tightening around Rebecca's wrist. "Don't go away like that."

Rebecca just looked at the freckled hand tightening around her sleeve until the sapphire and silver rayon lay in finely crumpled lines. "I'm here. We both are." Rebecca picked up her coffee, sipping it as an excuse to study Annalys from under her lashes. The coat was fine-woven wool, heavy enough to hold a weapon without sagging, but the rings on her fingers would interfere with her grip on a hilt and too clearly Annalys was only seeing what she wanted.

"And Amanda? Where is she?" Annalys was watching her every bit as intently, angry enough that she was no longer shielding her feelings properly. In that brief moment Rebecca recognized possessiveness and lust. Under those, barely seen before Annalys shifted her gaze, was a thwarted anger better suited to a toddler throwing a tantrum.

"Amanda isn't here. Nor is she dead, as you know. She was only ever part of this at your doing." Rebecca watched her and saw the anger break surface again. "Did she turn you down? Or were you surprised to want her and you're blaming her for seducing you?"

"Want her?" Annalys laughed, heedless of the attention her comment, and its volume, had drawn. "How hard do you have to work not to see it, Rebecca?"

"Not this hard," Rebecca said gently, pity waiting for later as pieces finally fell into place. "We should probably discuss this elsewhere."

"I'll keep my voice down," Annalys snapped. As promised it was quieter, but no less intense.

Rebecca deliberately looked down at the hand on her wrist. "Too much attention, Annalys. Let go." She deliberately threaded steel through her voice, and the old habits cut in: Annalys released her, then looked surprised and annoyed to have obeyed.

Rebecca met her responsibility's eyes, holding her face serene and unchanging as she asked quietly, "What, precisely, do you want? We can't discuss it until I know what we're discussing."

"You," Annalys said as if it had always been obvious and Rebecca was a dense but much-adored child. "We'd be so good together. Your wisdom and speed, my fire and strength."

Rebecca nodded again. "My wisdom. So you'd want me to manage things?"

"My strategies -- you always end up in the dull backwaters -- and your tactics. You're much better at survival than I am." Annalys' smile was dazzling, but the glittering light in her eyes, Rebecca mourned to see, was well beyond any lingering remnant of sanity.

Rebecca asked, "And in return?"

"Me, of course. Us. We were always such a good team until she interfered." Annalys looked into some past that bore no resemblance to the one Rebecca had experienced. "We can be that again. And then it'll be perfect again."

"It wasn't perfect then," Rebecca said. As she'd expected, even that mild comment brought a surge of color to Annalys' face, a tightening of her hand on the table. She pressed on anyway, needing a rough map of this insanity's borders. "It was a war, Annalys. People were dying all around us, and trying to live as much as possible in case they died the next day. Rationed food, darkened windows, the pounding of the shells, always one more engine to fix, one more poor soldier or civilian who couldn't be fixed."

"We were perfect," Annalys repeated, and the tightness of her voice belied the claim. "Quit saying things like that."

"Ah. So my wisdom only when you agree with it," Rebecca said, but she murmured it in a dialect Annalys had never learned, would never learn now. She nodded, however. "All right. I'll go check out of my hotel, then, and get my bags. Should we meet at the station?"

"Finally, you're seeing sense. I'll come and give you a hand." Annalys watched her covetously, one hand still on the table to grab what she wanted and the other fumbling in her clutch for money to cover the bill.

Rebecca shook her head. "No, we've made too much of a scene already. Best we let this fade from view until we reappear in a different aspect. We'll be going to your place?"

"Of course. And you're right of course. All right, not at the hotel and not here." Annalys smiled and sat back in her chair. "The station between here and your hotel, then. I'm living farther out, where there's a little quiet. Not as much as you're used to, but it's a compromise."

Rebecca smiled outwardly and nodded. "I'll be at the station in half an hour, then."

"Good, there's a train at 10:12. See you there." All her anger vanished and Annalys smiled brilliantly. At ease and happy, she was once again the lovely woman who'd been an ambulance angel along the trenches. She was even whistling as Rebecca left.

Every hair on Rebecca's neck tried to stand on end when she had to turn her back on Annalys.

* * *

Rebecca packed up quickly and checked out early with a vague explanation about her friend in Copenhagen being free sooner than he'd expected. (She changed the gender from habit, already blurring her backtrail as much as possible.) The walk back to the train station gave Rebecca time to tuck away inconvenient emotions and brace herself for the need to be close and affectionate with a strong, fast madwoman. One she'd trained, whose mannerisms she'd once known. A madwoman who'd fixated on her and might or might not have figured out some or Rebecca's own habits and twitches. And one who'd be carrying weapons of her own.

It was going to be a long ride to Annalys' station, no matter how little time it took.

* * *

From the train station to Annalys' house was a fifteen minute trip in a car she'd rented from a neighbor who couldn't quite afford it by himself . All the way there, Annalys kept up a steady stream of explanations and details, pointing out all the reasons her house would do them so well for a base: the creek path she loved to run along at night; the tulips coming up in a shade of yellow Rebecca had always loved; the small shop near the town that enjoyed tailoring jobs that stretched their talents and filled their coffers with bonuses for discretion; the north-facing windows of a room upstairs which would make a perfect library for Rebecca's books.

Rebecca paid attention to all of it, nodded and smiled at appropriate moments, and complimented Annalys on her forethought. And it had been forethought; she'd been setting it up for the two of them for a few years now.

"The garden needs work, but I thought you'd prefer to have more say in it," Annalys went on, waving a hand at the tidy but undistinguished beds of flowers and shrubs at the front. "There's a fish pond, not deep but pretty, and the stream bed feeds it." She shrugged and put down Rebecca's bag to unlock the front door. "We'll have to do something about water runoff if you don't want to keep it."

Rebecca nodded. "Yes, around here, we certainly would." As she shrugged her coat off, she brought her knife up and into Annalys's heart. Practice let her target it precisely, shoving and twisting the blade in until the hilt slapped against ribs trying to expand out and yell.

Annalys managed to strike out as she fell; the handful of keys ripped at Rebecca's arm and the taller woman's strength threw her against the wall. Rebecca grabbed her coat collar and spun Annalys around her to hit the wall face first, then brought her arms down and an elbow up into Annalys' throat, just in case.

It was unnecessary. Annalys slid down her to the floor, deadweight and dead, her face slack in the interval between pleasure and fury. Rebecca looked down at the crimson stain starting to form around the dagger, clearly visible on the cream blouse. Annalys convulsed as Rebecca stood there and the stain spread a little as her heart tried, futilely, to beat.

Rebecca sighed, pulled another, longer knife out, and buried it in her chest. Then she rolled Annalys over onto the hilt of the new blade, and set about securing her body.

* * *

It took two hours to scour the house for pictures of Rebecca, Amanda, or other immortals, for letters from any of them, for an address book that might mention them. Annalys hadn't kept journals, but she had kept photographs and slides; the albums and slide boxes filled a suitcase by themselves. Rebecca found and cracked the safe (another lesson from Amanda she'd hoped never to need) and took out the ready cash to support an illusion of a hurried exit for vacation or from scrutiny. She used two more suitcases full of clothes, shoes, toiletries and jewelry to support that illusion, and a pair of hatboxes besides.

She'd left armoires and dressers half-open and clearly ransacked, rejected items strewn over bed and chair in the hurry. She turned the furnace down but not entirely off and left the cupboards full and the milk bottles on the counter to further support the idea of a hasty departure. Regretfully, not seeing a better way, Rebecca also stole the poor neighbor's car to carry all the gear and Annalys' body.

Late in the night, so late it was closer by far to dawn, Rebecca pulled to a stop as far out as she dared on a rare deserted stretch of beach. The sea murmured to itself around her, a steady murmur of water on sand and shell. Rebecca dragged Annalys out onto of the trunk, seeing without surprise the fury etched into her face during the infinitesimal moments of attempted revival. Her blouse and coat were both crimson from those same attempted heartbeats, but the towel under her body had kept most of the blood off the lining of the car's trunk.

Rebecca pulled her body out to the edge of the water, testing each step carefully as she went. Her night sight was still adapting from the car lights, and this was no time to go in too deep. If she lost Annalys here, the knife would eventually come loose, and a second hunt would be much harder. She went back for one of the suitcases; it made it simpler to arrange Annalys' body so that her shoulders and head were unsupported. 

After that, all Rebecca had left to do was to sit beside her one-time student, sword hilt in her hands, watching the stars and waiting for her eyes to adapt to the darkness.

Memories came and went with the water: airplane engines throbbing overhead on their bombing runs to France, the Thames lapping along the wharf on a trip to London while Annalys was still studying with her, the clash and beat of blades in a sword forms, the growling drums of an American swing song that Rebecca had heard Annalys sing once, in Madrid.... 

After she could see the car clearly and the steady susurrus of the ocean had settled into her heartbeat. Rebecca looked down at her one-time student, memorizing her face. All she could say was, "I'm sorry nothing was enough, Annalys."

Rebecca raised her sword and beheaded the woman with the single, swift backhand stroke that Annalys had more than mastered, and ran for the car.

Lightning gathered, coiled upward, spat towards the only proper receptacle around… and couldn't reach the car, much less the woman who'd thrown herself down thirty yards beyond it. Rebecca lay sprawled on sand, shells, and what felt like a dislodged piece of shrapnel, feeling sparks crawling along her own hands and knees healing newly acquired gashes. It felt proper to be bleeding just now.

The lightning coiled upward in a sound and fury that took longer to fade to nothing than it probably should have. Rebecca watched that until the end, too, and said softly, "Stubborn, maybe. Or maybe you'd started headhunting. May you finally find some peace, Annalys."

* * *

By dawn, the bloody towel was in the ocean, weighted down by a knife.

So was Annalys.

The suitcases of clothes and jewelry went to Darius in Paris, to pass along to a charity or three that could find uses for them. The money went to a Belgian children's hospital. The photographs were reboxed and shipped to Rebecca's house in England for later sorting and, quite probably, burning.

Rebecca abandoned the car by a train station in Amsterdam, then caught a cab to the airport. She stared out the window, dry-eyed and tired, as they taxied down the runway and soared into the air, remembering her own dreams of flying like a bird. She smiled a little, grieved, remembering a discussion about learning to fly loop-the-loops; to the best of her knowledge, Annalys had never even taken lessons, much less worked to buy a plane of her own.

* * *

The hardest thing Rebecca's ever had to learn, the lesson she fights every time because sometimes she manages to win, the one that leaves her wakeful in the middle of the night when she loses (wondering what more she could have done), is that sometimes, you can't help them.

Rebecca sent Amanda a telegram that only said she was well, although sore of heart and went home, hoping to learn something from this loss, too.

Eventually.  


  
_~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~_

Comments, Commentary, and Miscellanea:

Written for the Hidden Facets series, which is about seldom seen aspects of various characters. In this case, the ruthless streak it would take to survive 3200 years and the streak of responsibility that would let a woman safely guard something like the Methuselah Stone.

Many thanks to the anonymous commenter on LJ who politely pointed out there are no sea cliffs in Belgium. ::facepalms:: Of all the things to miss.

Set off by the lyrics of the song "Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney and Wings:

> When you were young and your heart was an open book  
> You used to say, live and let live  
> You know you did, you know you did, you know you did.  
> But if this ever-changing world in which we're living  
> Makes you give it a cry  
> Say live and let die.
> 
> Live and let die.
> 
> What does it matter to you?  
>  When you got a job to do,  
>  You got to do it well.  
>  You got to give the other fellow hell.
> 
> You used to say,  
>  Live and let live.  
>  You know you did, you know you did, you know you did.  
>  But if this ever-changing world in which we're living  
>  Makes you give it a cry  
>  Say live and let die.

Other than that, I have no idea what brought this on. But I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
